Immigration Minister says cap on international study permits should not affect colleges and universities that have been ‘good actors’

Colleges and universities that didn’t contribute to the over-enrollment of international students should not be impacted by the federal government’s clampdown, said Immigration Minister Marc Miller, also warning that Ottawa may step in if provinces allow that to happen.

 

Miller, speaking at the Democracy Forum at Toronto Metropolitan University on Friday, said in addition to limiting numbers Ottawa also wants “to make sure that we are separating the wheat from the chaff, rewarding those institutions that have the ability to welcome and attract the top talent for which the international visa student program was designed for in the first place.”

 

Ottawa has put a two-year cap on international study permits, with a plan to reduce the number by 35 per cent, to 364,000, in part to also address a housing crunch in many of the communities with large numbers of foreign students. The cap does not apply to master’s or doctoral students or those in elementary or secondary schools.

 

Permits will be allotted based on population, leaving it to the provinces to divvy them up. Ontario will be among the hardest hit, given it has taken in 51 per cent of Canada’s international students.

 

While acknowledging that the changes being rolled out may make for a “turbulent year,” Miller said the clampdown may need to be further tailored “depending on what we see as the results or the impacts that the corresponding effects and actions that the province take in order to adjust for this.

“If they (the provinces) start to punish the good actors, that’s an unfortunate consequence that I may have to have a say over — but obviously we have to give the chance to the provinces” to fix the problems, Miller said.

 

Starting in May, no post-graduation work permits will be issued to international students who studied in a program run by public-private college partnerships, which have been blamed for the explosion in Ontario’s numbers.

 

Miller has been highly critical of the quality of such programs, some of them run out of strip malls.

 

Both colleges and universities charge international students much higher tuition fees — sometimes up to five times — and have been using them to boost revenues because of systemic underfunding by the Ontario government, Miller said.

 

“I don’t necessarily fault them entirely for that, but I think that has to be done responsibly,” he said at Friday’s forum, co-hosted by the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn and TMU professor Anna Triandafyllidou.

 

“Had we not capped this, we would have seen exponential growth over the next one or two years with very, very, very negative carry-on effects in a number of areas.”

 

Ontario colleges and universities are now awaiting word from the Ford government, which has to release its plan for allocating permits and the newly required verification letters by the end of the month.

 

“We know some bad actors are taking advantage of (international) students with false promises of guaranteed employment, residency and Canadian citizenship,” Ontario Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop has said. “We’ve been engaging with the federal government on ways to crack down on these practices, like predatory recruitment.”

 

Universities have been particularly vocal, noting that most have been responsible in their undergraduate foreign student intake. Triandafyllidou said TMU “has been among the virtuous ones (with) about 10 per cent international students” and it would be unfair “to pay the price for other universities and colleges (that had) a bit of reckless behaviour.”

 

Miller noted one school — Conestoga College — that posted a $100-million surplus at the end of the last school year because of its unusually large international student intake, that now accounts for more than half of its overall student population.

 

“That, in my mind, isn’t the vocation of college or university,” Miller said. “Not that I would deny anyone the right to gain profit, but you’re doing it on a bunch of people that have sometimes had their family earnings pooled into one person, their hopes and dreams into one person … on the basis of that dream that I believe still exists, and have it dashed quickly when they can’t get a job or get a crappy education and then have to file for asylum in some of the worst-case scenarios — and that isn’t an uncommon occurrence.”

Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities, said its schools “have been managing their international students responsibly. We’re very concerned that five other provinces have their (verification) systems in place, and now students can apply federally for their applications.

 

“We’re waiting for Ontario to come through with its allocation,” he said, noting that the council is asking for 35 per cent of all applications for its 23 members. “We’re also looking for Ontario to ensure that universities, that have been responsible, are not impacted at all.”

 

Colleges Ontario has said it has proposed a number of options to the provincial government and accused the federal clampdown is “wreaking havoc on people’s lives” with the confusion and changes.

 

Marketa Evans, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario, has previously said public-private college partnerships — some of them Miller has characterized as “puppy mills” — are “robustly” regulated with strict oversight on programming.

 

 

This article was first reported by The Star